Thursday, January 13, 2005

Unknown writers unfailingly peruse those end-of-year lists in the broadsheets and sigh despairingly as well-known authors big up each others' books. Then, looking for scraps of recognition from any quarter, they self-google, although admitting this pathetic search for flattery is as taboo in writers' circles (wherever they are) as a house-dad confessing to the mothers at a Boy Scout bake sale that he can't purge his hard drive of a stubbornly irremoveable cookie from hotchix.com.

How else, though, would I have discovered that 'Ve Stinu Tribuny', the highly ignored Czech translation of my book 'For Whom The Ball Rolls', would have been listed by a critic at the newspaper Lidovky as the third of his top three favourite books of 2004? Wahaaay! Right there behind Yann Martel and Jonathan Coe, who are names. Not names I've ever personally read, but I've certainly heard of them. And Milan Kundera doesn't even get a look in. At least not on that list.

"Velmi vtipné povídky nejen o fotbale, nad kterými by zřejmě i pan Habásko zaslzel, o Pavlu Kukovi nemluvě," writes Mr. Czech Critic. I haven't a clue what he's saying (maybe I've got it completely wrong and it's a list of peoples' crappest books of 2004), but I think he might be making a reference to Pavel Kuka, the Czech striker who used to play for Kaiserslautern and Nurenberg. Let's hope my UK publisher is already planning a new edition with a sticker on the front saying 'Czech bloke's 3rd. favourite book of 2004!'

The Quiet Fan

Coming soon from the writer of Stay-At-Home Indie-Pop - a lively, funny, partly polemical fan's memoir asking (among many other things): who are "the fans" that the media and the football industry always pigeon-hole and exploit as though we are a single mass entity? Click image for more information and to pledge for a limited edition hardback copy.

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About Me

Author of 'For Whom The Ball Rolls', 'Rock n Roll Soccer: The Short Life and Fast Times of the North American Soccer League', and 'The Quiet Fan.' I coach, play, watch, referee and write about football, and sometimes have a proper life as well.